The Analysis of Verbal Behavior

2006, 22, 153169

The Role of Modeling and Automatic Reinforcement in the

Construction of the Passive Voice
Anhvinh N. Wright, Fairfax County Public Schools
Language acquisition has been a contentious topic among linguists, psycholinguists, and behaviorists for
decades. Although numerous theories of language acquisition have surfaced, none have sufficiently accounted for the subtleties of the language that children acquire. The present study attempts to explain the
role of modeling and automatic reinforcement in the acquisition of the passive voice. Six children, ages 3
to 5, participated in this study. The results indicated that the children began using the passive voice only
after the experimenter modeled passive sentences. Furthermore, the usage of the passive voice increased
with repeated exposure to the experimenters verbal behavior. Given that the children were not explicitly
reinforced, it is proposed that their behavior was automatically reinforced for using the passive voice.
Key words: verbal behavior, modeling, automatic reinforcement, joint control.

Language acquisition has been a perplexing

topic for many psycholinguists in the last several decades. Although several theories have
surfaced, one widespread theory posits that
imitation plays a crucial role in language acquisition (Guess, Sailor, Rutherford, & Baer,
1968; Sherman 1971; Whitehurst, 1972;
Whitehurst & Novak, 1973). Positions on this
contentious issue range from the assertion that
imitation is required for language acquisition
(Bandura & Harris, 1966) to the notion that
imitation serves no function (Ervin, 1964).
Although there has been ample research examining the effects of imitation on language
acquisition, opponents argue that the theory
insufficiently accounts for novel utterances and
grammatical features of much of child speech.
As Slobin (1968a) suggests, [I]f a child were
to spend a lifetime imitating the sentences he
heard we could never account for the outstanding ability of every human being to speak and
understand sentences he has never heard before . . . (p. 437).
Chomsky (1980) proposes that an innate

I would like to thank Dr. Barry Lowenkron for all of his

patience and guidance in helping me to complete my thesis. I would also like to thank Dr. David Palmer for providing the materials and information necessary to complete
the research, and So-Young-Yoon of the Hawthorne Country Day School for preparing the drawings. I want to acknowledge B. F. Skinners remarkable work on the analysis of verbal behavior. I would also like to thank all of the
children and their families who participated in this experiment for their time, support, and cooperation. Address correspondence to Anhvinh Wright at 10310 Layton Hall Dr.,
Fairfax, VA 22030.

neural module selected by evolution, because

of apparent adaptive functions to the verbal
community, accounts for the acquisition of language. This theory is a molar interpretation of
language acquisition, whereas B. F. Skinners
1957 interpretation is a molecular one, which
addresses the complexity of language while
avoiding the circularity inherent in molar interpretations.
Verbal behavior is defined as behavior which
achieves its reinforcement through the mediation of other persons behavior (Skinner, 1989).
Verbal behavior is explained by identifying
classes of verbal operants (mand, tact,
intraverbal, autoclitic, echoic) and the independent variables of which these classes are a function (Skinner, 1957). However, a paradigmatic
criticism of behavioral interpretations by linguists and cognitive psychologists is that the
reinforcing practices of the verbal community
do not appear sufficient to shape the many
subtleties of childrens verbal behavior. In contrast to this viewpoint, many behaviorists argue that the practices of the verbal community
do in fact account for language acquisition,
whether the reinforcement is implicit or explicit. According to Palmer (1998):

153

Three variables play an important role in determining the orderly arrangement of verbal
operants or grammar. All three are distinguished
by their reference to the role of speaker-as-listener. The first variable is the intraverbal control exerted by frames over the grammatical
structure of an utterance; the second is the discriminative control exerted by the auditory
properties of the speakers own verbal behavior as he or she speaks (e.g., the role of speaker

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ANHVINH N. WRIGHT
as listener) and the third is the automatic shaping of verbal responses toward parity with practices of the verbal community, mediated by the
speakers repertoire as listener (p. 9). This orderly arrangement of verbal operants provides
a potential explanation for syntactic transformations. Thus, one can change, for example,
an active sentence into a passive construction
by moving a few words around and making a
few other alterations.

The first variable that plays an important role

in determining the orderly arrangement of verbal operants is the intraverbal control exerted
by patterns of behavior, or intraverbal frames.
In the case of the passive voice, the intraverbal
frame is The Z is being Y-ed by the X. While is
being and by the are fixed elements of the
frame, X, Y and Z are variable elements that
depend on the context, but from example to
example, the frame remains constant. It is inferred that the child covertly echoes the adults
verbal behavior as he or she hears the frame.
Over repeated instances of echoing, the frame
acquires strength as a new intraverbal sequence
in the childs repertoire. Eventually, it is this
repeated exposure to intraverbal frames that establishes intraverbal control over the childs
verbal behavior.
Palmer (1998) demonstrated the role of modeling in the formation of compound nouns providing evidence for intraverbal control. In the
experiment, Palmer praised the childs performance but modeled behavior that differed from
the childs. For example,
Model: This is a monster that eats mud. He
is a mud-eater.
Model: This monster eats mice. He must be
a
Subject: A mice eater.
Model: Thats right. Hes a mice-eater. Now
this monster over here eats books. Hes aSubject: Book eater.
Model: Yes. Thats right, hes a books-eater.
This monster over here eats chipmunks. He
must be
Subject: A chipmunk-eater.
Model: Right. Hes a chipmunks-eater. This
one eats marbles
Subject: Hes a marble-eater.
Model: Yes. Hes a marbles-eater. How about
this one? He eats candles. Hes aSubject: A candles-eater.
Model: Right. Hes a candle-eater. This one
eats spiders. Whats he?
Subject: A spiders-eater.

Model: Good. Hes a spider-eater. Now . . .

The discriminative control exerted by the
auditory properties of the speakers own verbal behavior as he or she speaks is a second
factor that may determine the arrangement of
grammar (Donahoe & Palmer, 1994). An important characteristic of verbal behavior under
normal conditions is that it is vocal. Since many
children are skilled listeners before they become fluent speakers, they need not rely on
feedback from others. Rather, with vocal behavior the child hears his or her own speech.
Subsequently, ones own speech is not only a
response, it is a stimulus, comparable, as a
stimulus, to the speech of others (p. 318).
Therefore, children may be provided immediate feedback about the conformity of their
speech relative to the verbal community. A
childs utterances can then shape and maintain
his or her behavior because he or she has
achieved parity with the practices of the verbal community. Parity is a particular kind of
response, a recognition that one has conformed (Palmer, 1996, p. 290).
Horne and Lowe (1996) attempt to explain
the discriminative control that auditory feedback has over orienting behavior, remarking
that this control contributes immensely towards
our understanding of the acquisition of equivalence classes. They also allude to the likely
reinforcing functions that such feedback can
afford, under the assumption that the verbal
stimuli already serve as conditioned reinforcers. Horne and Lowe observe:
the sounds and words uttered by parents may
function as potent classically conditioned
stimuli that have strong emotional effects on
the child so that when she hears her own replication of these vocal patterns she is affected by
stimuli that have similarly strong reinforcing
consequences. (p. 198)

Therefore, it is presumably reinforcing to

hear ones self say Good job because such expressions from parents are likely to be reinforcing.
It is important to note, however, that the auditory feedback from ones own speech plays
a far more important role with regard to the
shaping and development of verbal behavior
(Palmer, 1996). A childs utterances can shape
and maintain his or her behavior because he or
she has achieved parity with the practices of
the verbal community, not because of the spe-

AUTOMATIC REINFORCEMENT IN CONSTRUCTION OF THE PASSIVE

cific stimulus properties of the verbal stimuli.
Thus, the ability to discriminate is a precondition to achieving parity and subsequently obtaining automatic reinforcement.
Parity occurs when a childs behavior is
shaped automatically, as he or she recognizes
the congruence of behavior with that of the
verbal adult community. Thus, shaping of
speech can be automatic. Shaping of verbal
behavior occurs continuously and automatically over time (Palmer, 1996). Children do not
need to rely on extrinsic reinforcement or on
social approval from others.
The following experiment is an example of
shaping by parity. Palmer (1998) programmed
the keys on a computer keyboard to play tones
of different frequencies when pressed. There
was no orderly relationship between frequency
and key position. A woman was asked to play
Mary Had a Little Lamb. Although the tune
was in her repertoire as a listener (in that she
could complete a musical phrase if it were interrupted) the precise motor task was not. Thus,
performance had to be trained. Training was
accomplished solely by her motor behavior
producing stimuli that corresponded to a pattern that was familiar to her. Parity was established as a reinforcer by the demands of the
task and not by the tune itself.
There is a lucid discrepancy between reinforcement by the stimulus properties of a
childs speech and reinforcement by achieving parity with that of the verbal community.
Sundberg, Michael, Partington, and Sundberg
(1996) have suggested that verbal stimuli,
which develop from ones own speech, can
function as reinforcers if they have been established as conditioned reinforcers as a result
of being paired with other reinforcers. Hence,
a child might say Good boy! because the phrase
produces a reinforcing stimulus. Reinforcement by parity, however, is an entirely different issue. A child might imitate adult behavior
by saying Bad boy! even though it is a conditioned punisher because achieving parity with
the verbal community is automatically reinforcing. The verbal stimuli itself is not reinforcing
in this case.
An instructive analogy is that automatic reinforcement is like learning how to play a familiar tune on an unfamiliar instrument. An
individual trying to play a tune on an unfamiliar instrument covertly hums the tune. When a
note is sounded that corresponds with the note

155

covertly hummed, joint control (Lowenkron,

1998) occurs. As long as the notes sounded
match the notes being hummed, joint control
endures and the behavior is automatically reinforced. The sounding of a wrong note is punishing and joint control ends.
Likewise, when a child achieves parity with
the practices of the verbal community, joint
control occurs as long as response-produced
stimuli match that of the verbal community.
Thus, the childs verbal behavior is automatically reinforced. If children know the pattern
as listeners, their own behavior as speakers will
be reinforced. Their conditioned and unconditioned responses to the auditory properties of
their own speech coincide when they have said
it correctly. If they misspeak, they will instantly
recognize that they have done so in the absence
of joint control. This explanation suggests how
automatic reinforcement may account for the
rapid acquisition of an orderly arrangement of
verbal operants in children despite the lack of
explicit feedback from adults with regard to
grammatical errors in their speech.
Explicit contingencies do not have to be put
in place by the verbal community to ensure that
the many distinctions of verbal behavior are
taught. Brown and Hanlon (1970) examined
the interactions of parents with their children
in an attempt to evaluate the extent to which
parents reinforced grammatical utterances or
punished or corrected ungrammatical utterances. They determined that parents provided
very little explicit feedback and tended to reinforce the content of childrens utterances, not
the syntax or pronunciation.
Moerk (1983), however, re-analyzed Brown
and Hanlons data and found that parents provided a high frequency of reinforcement, modeling, and correcting. Brown and Hanlon
counted only instances in which a response was
followed by an expression of approval or disapproval such Good job or Thats incorrect.
Moerk observed that other parental responses
can have the same reinforcing effect. For example, the parents simply repeating the childs
utterances or orienting toward the child can
function as a reinforcer. While Moerks analysis demonstrated that a proportion of the contingencies of reinforcement in parent-child interactions are explicit, he did not oppose Brown
and Hanlons finding that many grammatical
errors are implicitly as well as explicitly reinforced (Donahoe & Palmer, 1994).

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ANHVINH N. WRIGHT

As important as modeling is, it does not fully

explain the acquisition of many subtleties of
verbal behavior. However, it should be noted
that through modeling children receive repeated exposure to verbal patterns, or
intraverbal frames, which are units of listener
behavior that consist of sequences of both fixed
and variable elements (Palmer, 1996). Over
time, these verbal frames establish intraverbal
control over childrens verbal behavior. When
a childs behavior finds parity with the verbal
community, reinforcement is automatic. Thus,
from a behavioral perspective, modeling and
automatic reinforcement appear to play a significant role in language acquisition, and in
particular, the construction of the passive voice.
Data from numerous studies substantiate the
claim that the passive construction is inadequately understood and rarely produced by the
nursery school children used as participants in
this area of research. For example, Lovell and
Dixon (1967) found that 4.5-year-old children
poorly understood and poorly produced the
passive voice. In addition, there were no reported occurrences of the passive construction
in over 12,000 spontaneous speech utterances
collected from 5-year-old participants
(Harwood, 1959). Turner and Rommetveit
(1967) also found that no more than 25% of a
series of passive sentences were correctly understood by a sample of nursery school children, while no more than 20% of the sample
of sentences could be emitted correctly. The
failure in production of the passive was further confirmed by the childrens inability to
repeat the passive construction even after the
experimenter presented a picture and modeled
the passive. Turner and Rommetveit, however,
discovered substantial increases in production
and comprehension of the passive by children
beyond the second grade.
Hayhurst (1967) found that children of ages
5, 6, and 9 performed significantly better when
they were asked to describe pictures using the
passive construction when a reference was not
made to an actor (e.g., the cat is being chased)
than when a reference was made to an actor
(e.g., The cat is being chased by a dog.) Hence,
children performed better when they had to
recall truncated passives than when they had
to recall full passives. Slobin (1966, 1968b)
also found that truncated passive sentences, as
well as making sentences nonreversible (e.g.,
the food was eaten by the man), substantially

lessened the difference between the syntactic

complexity of the active and the passive. Nonreversibility facilitated the comprehension of
the passive construction in that it became more
apparent which of the two nouns was the subject and which the object.
Whitehurst, Ironsmith, and Goldfein (1974)
demonstrated that even though production of
the passive was not observed in baseline conditions for their participants, modeling without reinforcement was effective in producing
the passive construction. Their experiment had
three stages. In Stage 1, the experimenter induced the children to practice correctly labeling the animals shown in 40 pictures. In Stage
2, the 40 pictures were divided into two sets of
ten pairs. Set 1 was designated models and Set
2 was designated probes. In the control condition, six of the children were shown 20 pictures from the probe set and asked to describe
them. In the experimental condition, the remaining six children were shown pictures from
the model and probe sets and asked to describe
them. During the experimental condition, the
experimenter modeled a passive construction
of a sentence describing the action of one of
the pictures from the model set. Reinforcement
was delivered contingent on the child not imitating the experimenter. If the child remained
silent, the experimenter showed the child a picture from the probe set and asked him or her to
describe it. The experimenter did not provide
reinforcement on probe trials. Model and probe
trials were randomly interspersed. In Stage 3,
the experimenter conducted a comprehension
test and induced the participants to identify the
pictures after listening to the experimenter describe the pictures in either the active or passive voice.
Silvestri, Davies-Lackey, Twyman, and
Palmer (in preparation) replicated a modified
version of the experimental condition of
Whitehurst et al. (1974) and found evidence of
the acquisition of the passive in all of their participants. Six preschool children were shown
pictures of two animals interacting. The experimenter conducted alternating trials in which the
experimenter modeled the passive construction
on odd-numbered trials and then gave the children an opportunity to describe a different picture on even-numbered trials. The experimenter
praised the children for using the active voice
and provided neutral remarks when the children
used the passive construction.

AUTOMATIC REINFORCEMENT IN CONSTRUCTION OF THE PASSIVE

157

Fig. 1. A pair of pictures from the training set. The picture in panel A is described in the active voice as The mouse
is pulling the elephant. The picture in panel A is described in the passive voice as The elephant is being pulled by the
mouse. The picture in panel B is described in the active voice as The elephant is pulling the mouse. The picture in
panel B is described in the passive voice as The mouse is being pulled by the elephant.

The results suggest that the passive construction was already in the repertoire of two of the
six participants whose verbal behavior immediately came under the control of the model.
This was evidenced by their production of the
passive on nearly every trial. The remaining
four participants produced partial or complete
passive construction over the course of the
experiment. The performance of the participants in this study suggests that they were able
to modify their verbal behavior to conform to
a rather complex model. They were not simply
imitating. Rather, they were repeating an
intraverbal frame in which variable terms appeared in a novel way without explicit reinforcement. In other words, the reinforcement
may have derived from the parity between the
childs behavior and the adults. The data can
be interpreted as support for the role of automatic reinforcement in the acquisition of language.
The present study is a modification of the
study conducted by Whitehurst et al. (1974)
and Silvestri et al. (in preparation). The present
study includes a separate baseline condition
whereas Silvestri et al. used the early part of
their training as a baseline. In addition, the
present study also uses a generalization set by
combining the pictures to mix up the actors and
objects. Like Silvestri et al. (in preparation),

the present study examines the effects of modeling on the production of the passive construction and supports the view that the passive
voice is acquired by automatic reinforcement
rather than through the supplementation of lavish extrinsic reinforcement. The study also addresses the effects of repeated exposure to training and generalized stimuli in the acquisition
of the passive construction and attempts to
demonstrate how repeated exposure to the
intraverbal frames establishes intraverbal control over the childs verbal behavior. Additionally, the implications of joint control in the acquisition of verbal behavior are also discussed
in the study.
METHOD
Participants
Six children, five females and one male ranging in age from 3 years 6 month to 5 years 6
months served as participants in this study. The
participants were of varied ethnic background
(African American, Asian, Caucasian, Hispanic). Fathers were employed as professionals, human service employees, or were in sales.
Mothers were either human service employees, were in sales, or were homemakers. The
participants attended day care, pre-school or

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ANHVINH N. WRIGHT

kindergarten for typically developing children

in middle class communities. All of the participants appeared normal in their intellectual
and physical development. To protect the anonymity of the participants, the children will be
referred to by their arbitrarily assigned names
throughout this paper.
Materials and Setting
The study was conducted in a room at the
subjects home. A small table in the corner of
the room was used during the experiment. A
sheet of stickers, a 12.7 x 12.7 cm sticker chart
with twenty 2.54 cm squares, and an audiotape recorder were on the table. In addition, a
25.4 cm x 29.2 cm three-ring binder was also
on the table. Inside the binder was a stack of
40 black and white 10.16 cm x 15.24 cm drawings used as stimuli. The 40 drawings consisted
of 20 pairs of pictures.
One set of 10 pairs was used for training
and one was used for testing. Each pair showed
the same two animals interacting. One picture
depicted animal A doing something to animal
B. The alternate picture in the pair depicted
animal B doing the same thing to animal A (see
Figure 1).
In addition, there were 17 black-and-white
10.16 cm x 15.24 cm drawings used as the
switch set. These drawings were similar to the
training pictures except that animal A or animal B was replaced by another animal from a
different pair in the training set (see Fig. 2).
Procedure
At the start of the session, the child was told
that he/she was going to play a game in which
stickers could be earned, and there was also an
additional prize for playing with the experimenter. The child was then shown a bag of
prizes containing various toys and allowed to
select a single preferred item. The experimenter
then sat down next to the child at the table and
placed the selected item on the table, where it
remained in sight throughout the session. In
order to motivate the child to maintain his/her
performance during the session, the experimenter gave the child stickers that were placed
on the sticker chart. The stickers were given
on a VR 4 schedule contingent on the childs
sitting well and describing the pictures using
the active voice. When the child earned 20

stickers, the prize was presented. When present,

a reliability observer sat behind the child. One
adult female served as the experimenter. The
data for each child was collected in a single
session that lasted no more than 40 min.
Phase 1: Baseline. When the experiment
began, the child was given the following instructions: Were going to play a game and
you will get to tell me about these pictures.
Sometimes it will be my turn to talk about the
pictures and sometimes it will be your turn to
talk about the pictures. When it is your turn, I
will tell you it is your turn. (If the child did
not repeat the instructions, the experimenter repeated them until the child seemed to understand.)
The child was then shown 10 pictures from
the testing stimuli and asked to describe them.
Phase 2: Modeled passive and assessed for
passive construction using the training set. The
experimenter showed the child one item from
a pair and described it using the passive voice.
For example, the experimenter showed the
child a picture of an elephant pulling a mouse
and said, The mouse is being pulled by the
elephant (see Figure 1). After the experimenter
described one item from a pair using the passive construction, the experimenter showed the
child the alternate item from the pair on the
next trial. Hence, the child was shown the alternate picture from the pair and instructed, Its
your turn, tell me about this picture. For example, the experimenter showed the child a
picture of a mouse pulling an elephant and said,
Its your turn, tell me about this picture.
The experimenter always nodded or said,
Good or some equivalent social praise when
the child used the active voice to describe the
picture. The experimenter never praised the
child for using the passive voice or otherwise
indicated that the passive construction was the
desired response. In other words, reinforcement
was withheld when the child used the passive
construction.
Phase 3: Tested the production of the passive construction using the switch set. The child
was shown 17 pictures from the switch stimuli
and asked to describe them.
Phase 4: Modeled passive and assessed for
passive construction using the training set. The
procedure used in Phase 2 was used to test the
production of the passive construction.
Phase 5: Tested the production of the passive construction using the switch set. The pro-

AUTOMATIC REINFORCEMENT IN CONSTRUCTION OF THE PASSIVE

159

Figure 2. Two pictures from the switch set. These drawings are similar to the drawings from panel A and B in Figure
1, except that a rabbit replaced the mouse in panel A and a dog replaced the elephant in panel B.

cedure used in Phase 3 was used to test the

production of the passive construction.
Phase 6: Tested the production of the passive construction using the testing set. The procedure used in Phase 1 was used to test the
production of the passive construction (with
the exception that stickers were given for responding to the pictures using the active voice
during this phase) using the set of 10 pairs from
the testing stimuli.
Measurement
In Phases 1, 3, 5 and 6, the pictures were
held up in front of the child and the instruction
Tell me about this picture was given. The
experimenter waited 10 s for the child to respond. If a response was made, the experimenter recorded the complete response verbatim. The picture was removed and after a 2 s
pause, the next picture was presented and the
experimenter repeated the instruction, Tell me
about this picture.
In Phases 2 and 4, the experimenter showed
one item from a pair and described it using the
passive voice. The experimenter then waited
for 10 s. If the child did not imitate the experimenter, the experimenter said, Good waiting

for your turn. The picture was then removed

and the next trial followed in 2 s. If the child
tried to imitate the passive construction, the
experimenter stated, Dont say anything until
I tell you its your turn, and started the trial
over again. Thus, reinforcement was delivered
contingent upon the absence of imitation during training trials.
Interobserver agreement data was taken during two sessions. Both the experimenter and
the second observer recorded all responses
verbatim and had access to the audiotape recordings during both sessions. Interobserver
agreement was 100% during these sessions.
Four categories of utterances were scored as
passive constructions for the data described in
Figure 3. Each of these categories was scored
as a successful production of the passive voice.
They were as follows: (1) utterances which
contained the passive construction and described the subject and object in the correct
position as portrayed in the picture;1 (2) utterances which contained a passive structure but
in which the actor and object were reversed
from the roles depicted in the pictured being
1

The dog is being brushed by the cat.

ANHVINH N. WRIGHT

160

Fig. 3. Percentage of trials resulting in complete or partial passive construction across all six phases. Each subject
scored 0% in Phase 1. The training set was used in Phases 2 and 4, the switch set was used in Phases 3 and 5, and the
testing set was used in Phases 1 and 6.

described;2 (3) utterances which contained a

passive construction but in which the same
animal was labeled in both the subject and object role,3 and (4) utterances that were truncated
passive constructions which had no expressed
actor.4 The first category is an example of a
complete passive. The last three categories are
scored as partial passives. Occasionally, the
children would mislabel the animal in a picture. For example, a zebra might be labeled a
horse. Such responses were treated as semantically appropriate since these animals are similar in appearance.
RESULTS
The graph in Figure 3 depicts the percentage of production of the passive construction
across participants, aggregating the three forms
of partial passives with complete passive constructions. Figures 49 decompose the data and

The cat is being brushed by the dog.

The dog is being brushed by the dog.
4
The dog is being brushed.
2
3

depict the percentage of each of the four categories of passive constructions during each
phase for each participant, respectively. The
numerical results expressed in Figures 49 are
summarized below.
Sixty percent of Sues utterances in Phase 2,
59% in Phase 3, 60% in Phase 4, 76% in Phase
5, and 15% in Phase 6 were complete passives.
She produced a passive construction in which
the same animal was labeled in both the subject and object role in 10% of her utterances in
Phase 2. She produced the truncated passive
in 10% of her utterances in Phase 2, 6% in
Phase 5, and 15% in Phase 6. She also produced the reverse passive in 12% of her utterances in Phase 3, 10% in Phase 4, 18% in Phase
5, and 15% in Phase 6.
For Isaac, 60% of all of his utterances in
Phase 2, 76% in Phase 3, 90% in Phase 4, 88%
in Phase 5, and 35% in Phase 6 were complete
passives. He also produced the truncated passive in 6% of his utterances in Phase 5 and the
reverse passive in 20% of his utterances in
Phase 2 and 5% in Phase 6.
For Sarah, 18% of all her utterances in phase
3, 30% in Phase 4, 6% in Phase 5, and 10% in
Phase 6 were complete passives. She produced

AUTOMATIC REINFORCEMENT IN CONSTRUCTION OF THE PASSIVE

161

Fig. 4. Percentage of partial and complete passive constructions across each of the six phases.

partial passives in which the same animal was

labeled in both the subject and object role in
6% of her utterances in Phase 3. She also produced the reverse passive in 40% of her utterances in Phase 2, 12% in Phase 3, 60% in Phase
4, 47% in Phase 5, and 5% in Phase 6.
For Kate, 80% of all of her utterances in
Phase 2, 82% in Phase 3, 100% in Phase 4,
88% in Phase 5, and 50% in Phase 6 were com-

plete passives. She also produced the truncated

passive in 6% of utterances in Phase 5 and the
reverse passive in 10% of her utterances in
Phase 2.
For Alex, 50% of all of her utterances in
Phase 2, 53% in Phase 3, 70% in Phase 4, 29%
in Phase 5, and 10% in Phase 6 were complete
passives. She also produced the truncated passive in 5% of her utterances in Phase 6 and the

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ANHVINH N. WRIGHT

Phases
Fig. 5. Percentage of partial and complete passive constructions across each of the six phases.

reverse passive in 20% of her utterances in

Phase 2 and 10% in Phase 4.
For Aimee, 10% of all of her utterances in
Phase 2, 10% in Phase 4, 24% in Phase 5, and
6% in Phase 6 were complete passives. She
also produced the reverse passive in 40% of
her utterances in Phase 2, 6% in Phase 3, 60%
in phase 4, and 18% in Phase 5.

DISCUSSION
None of the children used the passive construction to describe the pictures in Phase 1.
They either labeled the animals in the pictures
or described the pictures using the active voice.
The results in this study support previous findings that in the absence of modeling, nursery

AUTOMATIC REINFORCEMENT IN CONSTRUCTION OF THE PASSIVE

163

Fig. 6. Percentage of partial and complete passive constructions across each of the six phases.

school children rarely produce the passive

voice (Lovell & Dixon, 1967; Harwood, 1959;
Turner & Rommetveit, 1967a). All of the children began using either the partial and/or complete passive construction only after the experimenter modeled the passive sentences. Repeated exposure to the training set in Phase 2
and Phase 4 and the switch set in Phase 3 and
Phase 5 generally increased production of the
passive voice across participants. All partici-

pants uniformly exceeded baseline levels of

passive production without modeling in Phase
6 when presented with the testing stimuli.
The results from the present study support
the findings of Whitehurst et al. (1974) and
Silvestri et al. (in preparation) with regard to
the impact of modeling on the acquisition of
the passive voice. Through modeling, the children received repeated exposure to the
experimenters verbal behavior. Subsequently,

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ANHVINH N. WRIGHT

Fig. 7. Percentage of partial and complete passive constructions across each of the six phases.

repeated exposure to examples of the passive

construction such as The elephant is being
pushed by the mouse and The fish is being
kissed by the bird, established the intraverbal
frame, the Z is being Y-ed by the X, in the childs
repertoire as a listener. Furthermore, repeated
exposure to these examples appeared to

strengthen the rate of occurrence of the

intraverbal frame, and over time established
intraverbal control over the childrens verbal
behavior (Palmer, 1998). The child was then
able to conform to the experimenters verbal
patterns and produce either the partial or complete passive constructions from Phase 2 to

AUTOMATIC REINFORCEMENT IN CONSTRUCTION OF THE PASSIVE

165

Fig. 8. Percentage of partial and complete passive constructions across each of the six phases.

Phase 6. Thus, repeated exposure to an

intraverbal frame can lead to appropriate control that extends over variable or novel elements.
In general, the childrens description of the
pictures conformed to the structure of the
intraverbal frame, The Z is being Y-ed by the
X, by changing the Z and X elements accordingly across examples and adding ed to the

Y element or regular past-tense verb. These response patterns demonstrate how the prosodic,
temporal, and semantic properties of the X, Y,
and Z elements of the frame govern the transition from one element of the frame to the next.
The prosodic and temporal properties of the
variable elements are stimulus properties that
have physical dimensions whereas the semantic properties are derived from an individuals

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ANHVINH N. WRIGHT

Fig. 9. Percentage of partial and complete passive constructions across each of the six phases.

own history of contingencies. With regard to

prosodic properties, notice for example, that
The elephant is being pulled by the mouse is
said with the same pattern of intonation as The
fish is being kissed by the bird. It is said with
the same pattern of intonation that is independent of the phonemes.
As for temporal properties, the element by
the is indirectly controlled by another verbal
stimulus, is being, with a certain pattern of

emphasis and duration. Therefore, Y cannot be

indefinitely long or intraverbal control of by
the X will be lost. For example, if a long clause
were inserted, such as The elephant is being
very slowly and cautiously pulled by the
mouse intraverbal control would be lost. The
Z element also cannot be indefinitely long or
the intraverbal control of is being Yed will be
lost. If a clause of great length were inserted,
such as The elephant that is hungry and mad

AUTOMATIC REINFORCEMENT IN CONSTRUCTION OF THE PASSIVE

because he has not eaten all morning is being
pulled by the mouse intraverbal control will
be degraded. Indeed here, all intraverbal control over the object being acted upon is lost.
As for semantic properties, Z must be something that is being acted upon while X must be
something that is performing the action expressed by the verb.
For example, some of the children described
the picture of a dog brushing a cat as The cat
is being brushed by the dog. However, some
children were not able to identify the action,
and substituted that verb with one that could
be semantically correct in the context of that
picture. For example, one childs response to
the picture of the dog brushing the cat was,
The cat is being scratched by the dog. Despite using the incorrect verb, the prosodic and
temporal properties created a certain pattern or
rhythm that enabled the child to adhere to the
intraverbal frame.
Some of the children used regular past tense
verbs when novel stimuli were presented that
contained irregular past-tense verbs. For example, one child described a picture of a squirrel catching a frog as The frog is getting
pushed by the squirrel. For the same picture,
another child said, The frog is being stopped
by the squirrel. None of the children described
the picture as The frog is being caught by the
squirrel. In another example, one child described a picture of a camel throwing a snail as
The snail is being pushed by the camel. In
each of these examples the children switched
from the irregular past-tense verb to a regular
past-tense verb to conform to the intraverbal
frame and used verbs that were semantically
appropriate to the context of the picture.
The experimenter observed that Sarah and
Aimee only gradually conformed, while Kate,
Isaac, Sue, and Alex immediately conformed
to the experimenters verbal behavior by using the complete passive construction after
modeling occurred. For example, after the experimenter modeled the response, The tiger
is being sprayed by the giraffe during Phase
2 and asked Sarah to describe the alternate picture from the same pair, she responded, The
lion being watered by a giraffe. However,
when the experimenter presented Sarah the
identical picture in Phase 4, she described the
picture as The tiger is being sprayed by a giraffe, which is a reverse passive. Interestingly,
the two participants who exhibited gradual

167

conformity also produced the largest percentage of reverse passives. As evidenced in Figures 6 and 9, Sarah and Aimee produced an
increasing percentage of reverse passives with
repeated exposure to the training stimuli in
Phases 2 and 4, and with the switch stimuli in
Phases 3 and 5.
One possible explanation for the phenomenon of gradual conformity is related to auditory discrimination with regard to ones own
verbal behavior. After listening to modeled responses from the experimenter, some of the
children who initially produced only partial
passive constructions began to produce complete passive sentences. The presumptive inference is that a child who is uttering part of
the passive finds that it coincides with the
intraverbal pattern that has been set up by the
experimenter over the course of repeated utterances, that child begins to emit patterns of
relevant intraverbal responses. As a skilled listener, the child is able to detect when he or she
has conformed or deviated from the
experimenters verbal behavior. Thus, with
vocal behavior, children are discriminating listeners long before they become fluent speakers (Fraser et al., 1963; Mann & Baer, 1971;
Gesell & Thompson, 1934; Whitehurst &
Novak, 1973; Palmer, 1996). The feedback
from ones own speech serves a different reinforcing function that appears to play a role in
the shaping and development of verbal behavior. Under most circumstances, people find
parity of speech with that of others to be reinforcing and deviations from parity to be punishing. To the competent listener, a deviation
from parity is instantly detected (Palmer, 1996).
Countless contingencies of reinforcement are
implicit in the acts of speaking and hearing
oneself conform to the practices of the verbal
community. Nearly every occurrence of verbal behavior is provided with reinforcement of
some sort. By contrast, very little reinforcement
is explicitly arranged (e.g., parents simply repeating childs utterances or parents orienting
to the child and responding appropriately in
some way).
The subtle aspects of our verbal repertoire
may well be shaped by the contingencies of
automatic reinforcement. The process might be
as follows. The children were eventually affected by the intraverbal pattern as listeners and
were possibly rehearsing it covertly throughout the experiment. When the pictures evoked

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ANHVINH N. WRIGHT

a tact that coincided with the current intraverbal

response, automatic reinforcement would have
occurred for a passive-voice response. Thus,
the auditory stimulus that the child as a speaker
produced and the child as a listener heard exerted joint control over responses conditioned
to the earlier elements of the intraverbal frame.
Based on this analysis, the occurrence of the
passive voice would have maintained and/or
increased even though explicit reinforcement
was received only for responses in the active
voice. The implication is that the reinforcer in
modeling is not primarily explicit but rather
automatic. That is, the subject is reinforced
directly by the similarity between his or her
behavior and that of the model; direct social
approval is not always necessary (Palmer,
1996). As Skinner (1957) pointed out:
When a sound pattern has been associated with
reinforcing events, it becomes a conditioned
reinforcer . . . . The young child alone in the
nursery may automatically reinforce his own
exploratory vocal behavior when he produces
sounds, which he has heard in the speech of
others. The self-reinforcing property may be
merely an intonation or some other idiosyncrasy
of a given speaker or of speakers in general ....
The process is important in shaping up standard forms of response. (p. 58)

The reinforcement is immediate, automatic,

and mediated largely by the repertoires of a
child-as-speaker and a child-as-listener. When
children first learn to speak they can be affected
by the tempo and orderly arrangement of complex verbal operants as stimuli, but cannot produce them. However, when they succeed in
doing so, they do not need to be explicitly reinforced by the adult verbal community; the
stimulus aspects of the achievement itself are
reinforcing (Palmer, 1998).
In summary, the speaker-as-listener evokes
behavior in himself/herself as well as in others. This process would seem to be important
in the acquisition of verbal behavior. Modeling provides repeated exposure to verbal patterns and consequently establishes intraverbal
frames, which constitute a form of intraverbal
control over the childs verbal behavior. The
resemblance of the auditory feedback a child
receives from his/her own verbal behavior to
the stimuli provided by the verbal community
can function as reinforcement for acquiring the
communitys verbal practices. Achieving parity with the community can function as rein-

forcement for further imitation of adult verbal

behavior. More specifically, this study provides
some support for the view that modeling and
automatic reinforcement offer a molecular yet
parsimonious model for understanding the acquisition of the passive construction. On a
larger scale, it also provides a potential mechanism to explain some aspects of the acquisition of language in general.
One limitation of the study arises from the
difficulty of assessing whether or not the children possessed the passive construction in their
repertoires prior to the experiment. This limitation may impact future studies because it is
unlikely that any childs complete history of
speech will ever be known. This research, however, bolsters findings from previous studies
that support the notion that language in general, and in particular the passive voice, can be
acquired through modeling and automatic reinforcement; explicit reinforcement is not required. Thus, to ensure appropriate language
acquisition and development, parents and educators need to be aware of how the practices of
the verbal community shape a childs verbal
repertoire. It is not because of the stimulus
properties of the speech patterns but presumably because of a long history of contingencies in which behaving as adults behave (conforming to a model) has been automatically
reinforced.
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